asukaskerian:

ciceqi:

In the first hours after the fight, the river, the soldier’s first instinct is to go to ground, buy himself time to recover and regroup. He’s still not certain why his reaction to his target’s final words was so strong, but the catchphrase–trigger sequence?–scratches constantly at the back of his thoughts like a directive he’s trying to ignore. The man is familiar, and somehow so is his impulsive behavior, despite how little sense it makes. It’s unsettling, and the soldier wants answers.

He listens to news broadcasts after eliminating the retrieval team sent to bring him in, and gradually the missing pieces fall into place. To the civilians reporting on the aftermath, Hydra was found to have infiltrated SHIELD, resulting in a victory for freedom, an enormous amount of property damage, and a ruined afternoon commute for thousands of people.

Sitting in the back corner of a run-down diner, comfortably anonymous in civilian clothes and nursing a cup of coffee, the soldier ponders the intricacies running beneath the surface and tries to work out his next move.

He understands that the world sees SHIELD and Hydra as two separate entities, but he recognizes the past week for what it is: a faction conflict that has finally boiled over into decisive action. It’s not the first shakeup he’s seen; he’s been the deciding factor in policy change before, Karpov using him to great effect in his last long period of wakefulness. Pierce had certainly learned from his predecessor’s successes; his first move had been to send the soldier to remove his rival.

Things should have fallen neatly into place after that. Either SHIELD would toe the line, or Pierce would send the soldier out to take care of Fury’s successors, and theirs after them. Only instead, things had gotten…messy.

As he understands it, Steve Rogers–Captain America–has no real power inside SHIELD. He’s a combination of operative and figurehead, and yet his is the name on every tongue. Something about this is annoying in its familiarity, or perhaps just annoying. But.

Fury is dead, but so is Pierce. People speak as if SHIELD has fallen, and yet there was no need to abandon such a useful cover. The soldier has quietly been listening to Hydra’s communications for two days now, and yet Rogers has made no attempt to move into any of the vacancies he’s created at the top. Being in the hospital is no excuse; his subordinates should be acting on his behalf.

Unless they’re unreliable. Unless he has no subordinates and is trying to take on all of Hydra single-handedly. (Again.)

The soldier frowns into the depth of his coffee cup. Again?

Somehow the soldier knows him.

When the man in the booth ahead of his gets up, he leaves his newspaper behind. The soldier watches for a moment, but when no one else claims it, he gets up and fetches it back to his own table. The articles are full of hysteria, thouroughly distracted from anything important by the Widow’s clever information dump. He has to remind himself sternly that a weapon feels no pride.

He nearly skips over the entertainment section until a full-color photograph of his mission catches his eye.

He finishes his coffee and leaves a wad of bills behind from one of the wallets he lifted off the extraction team. He has reconnaisance to do.

The Smithsonian display is both a revelation and a headache. His mission’s face is everywhere: staring nobly off into the distance, smirking from yellowed posters, thin and frail (and not surprising at all) in a single black and white image all but hidden away as if ashamed. But there’s another face as well, and that one…that one he knows from long-ago ops, so old they’re nearly obliterated. They’d called him the American then.

Before that, Rogers had called him Bucky.

He stares at the photographs, letting it sink in: standing at a map table with Rogers, wearing an attentive expression; standing behind Rogers, rifle in hand, on guard. If he’s here, Rogers is there, and if Rogers is there, he’s the center of the soldier’s focus. The truth is blindingly obvious.

Rogers is not his mission.

That little guy from Brooklyn?

Rogers is a handler, the first handler.

I’m following him.

No wonder Pierce had wanted Rogers dead. The faction that controls the asset has a good shot at controlling all of Hydra, and it’s clear Rogers still has a firm grip on the soldier’s programming. With Pierce dead, with Rogers’ claim on him still in effect, he may well be the unreliable subordinate failing his superior by not firmly consolidating his power; he’d irresponsibly wandered off before orders could be given.

The soldier stares long and hard at the face of the man who owns his obedience and does not give in to a weary sigh.

A handler. He should have guessed.

Suddenly the willful idiocy and erratic behavior make all the sense in the world.

oh my god. i love how the conclusion makes complete sense considering what kind of assumptions and knowledge he’s running on and at the same time, oh god, bucky. this is going to be such a fun clusterfuck. i hope he doesn’t decide to assassinate too many people in steve’s name. XDD